


The Castle

by allisondraste



Series: Minutemen Missives [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Battle, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23817439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allisondraste/pseuds/allisondraste
Summary: Charlie is injured in the battle for the historic Minutemen stronghold and Preston worries for her life.
Relationships: Preston Garvey/Female Sole Survivor, Preston Garvey/Sole Survivor
Series: Minutemen Missives [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1716052
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	The Castle

The first time Charlie had ever used a missile launcher was thirty seconds ago, when she’d accidentally taken out a significant chunk of the Castle’s already crumbling walls. A misfire. Her own shitty aim. 

_Sorry, Preston_ , she thought as she loaded another missile, ears ringing and body aching from infinite cuts, gashes, bruises, and maybe a broken ankle. 

It was hard to tell in the loud thundering chaos of the moment, slimy little hatchlings scything at her feet with sharp scissor claws. Green acidic fumes burned and seared her skin and eyes, obscuring her vision. The odor soured her already restless stomach and she thought she might be sick. Knew she would if she let herself think about it. Swallowing the nausea and biting back the pain, she lifted the launcher and aimed. She could give into her weak knees later, when the queen was dead, when the Castle was liberated. Maybe she could apologize for the wall, too. If she lasted that long.

_Aim for the face._

“When you’re fighting a ‘lurk, don’t waste your ammo on the shell,” he’d told her as they secured the fort’s perimeter, “Aim for the underbelly. Closer to the face the better.”

MacCready had scoffed at Preston’s lesson. “Don’t worry Garvey. Chuck and I can handle the seafood.”

She wondered if the mercenary was having second thoughts now as he stood backed against a wall, only separated from the swarm of irradiated, crablike monstrosities by the flamethrower spitting out hot fire in all directions as he turned. The mirelurks hissed and screamed, falling belly up in his wake. Charlie only wished the Queen was so susceptible.

She steadied the weapon, held her breath, and pulled the trigger. She couldn’t see if she’d hit her mark, recoil punching her backward, tired knees buckling from the force. There was only an explosion, thunder against her eardrums, a hissing scream, and then silence. She wondered if she’d lost her hearing, but then there were cheers. Not many, just a couple of voices, but enough to ease her mind. 

Charlie wanted to join the others in celebration, to clap them on their backs and say “good work,” but she couldn’t move, ache and fatigue setting in, burning pain radiating up from her ankles. Sighing her relief, she let her eyes flutter closed, welcoming the release of unconsciousness. She’d won. They had the Castle. 

But she was interrupted, jolted to reality by a forceful shake to her shoulders and a familiar voice, as if calling to her from outside a giant, glass bubble. 

“Jesus, Chuck.” MacCready. It was MacCready beside her. “What the f— what is actually wrong with you? Got any more bright ideas on ways to get killed in that skull of yours.”

“How bad is it,” she asked hoarsely, wincing at the knives stabbing at her legs.”

“Uhh…looks like you might have a broken ankle and the—“

“No,” she interjected, “The wall. How’s the wall?”

“The— you’ve got to be kidding,” Mac snapped, “You look like road kill and you’re worried about the stupid wall?”

“Mhmm.” Was all she could manage.

“It has _another_ hole in it. You happy, ” he grumbled, moving to pick her up, arms gentler than his words, “Now let's get you inside.”

A surge of pain consumed her as Mac rose to his feet, bringing her up with him, but she was too exhausted to even hiss in response. How had she remained standing for so long? How was she even alive? She let her head fall limply against her friend’s shoulder, the scent of iron and saltwater sharp in her nose. darkness creeping in from the corner of her eyes. 

“Stay with me, Chuck,” he said from thousands of miles away. The last thing she remembered as the world faded to black.

* * *

Preston’s pulse pounded in his ears, throat sore from shouting to the others in the midst of the fight, as he walked the inner perimeter of Fort Independence, taking stock of the situation as it was. It had been forty-seven years since the Minutemen had called the Castle their own, forty-seven years since a “monster” crawled from the sea and took it from them. It was a mirelurk queen, a slimy, disgusting thing, whose gigantic carcass now lay belly-up in the center of the fortress.

He took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes closed, a vain attempt not to notice the bodies of his comrades surrounding the queen’s. People he’d asked to help. People with families and lives. But he had to notice, to see whose wives and husbands and children he’d be sending word to, along with an apology that would sound hollow no matter how deeply he meant it. 

There were five of them dead out of a party of eight. Five more people who he failed to keep safe, stacked atop the growing pile of those lost at Quincy. At Lexington. At Concord. If it hadn’t been for Charlie, he might be one of the bodies left lying on the floor of the Museum of Freedom. Maybe he’d have been that death claw’s next meal. Maybe it would have been better that way. 

Preston shook his head. No. He’d helped more than he’d lost. Settlements were growing and new recruits showed up to join the Minutemen every couple of days. They were making a difference, but making the Commonwealth a better place was a dangerous job. He could not beat himself up over every casualty. He’d finally found hope again, and he wasn’t going to let a damned ‘lurk pry it away from him. 

But when he gathered himself enough to look up and scan the area, his heart sank. MacCready’s wiry frame stumbled across the courtyard, a limp form in leathers in his arms, and he didn’t need to see the glint of sunlight in coppery hair for every bit of that hope to drain away. He wanted to rush to them, to her, but his feet were frozen beneath him, whole body panicked and numb. He hadn’t even considered Charlie in all the chaos. He trusted that she would be fine, that she would need him the least, especially with their mercenary friend at her back. It hadn’t crossed his mind that she might be one of the wounded, one of the—

He couldn’t even think the word, and it knocked him out of his daze. He called to the three Minutemen remaining, orders. Something to do, to help. “Go inside, find a mattress, a sleeping bag, whatever’s there for us to lay her on. Any first-aid supplies, too.”

“Yes sir,” said the first, a young man with blond hair and the tired eyes of someone who had to grow up too fast. 

“Neither of you have any experience treating injuries, do you,” Preston asked the remaining two with a defeated tone, already knowing the answer. He had to blink back his surprise when the middle aged man stepped forward. 

“I’m no doctor, but I used to travel with a caravan,” he explained gruffly, “Lots of raider attacks. Learned real quick how to patch people up. Animals, too.”

“Great. That’s… awesome,” Preston said, more to himself than to the man, “Cha—ahem— the general may need your help.”

The man looked back behind him, to where MacCready approached, and then back, nodding seriously. “Whatever she needs. She’s the reason that ‘lurk is on the ground and not the rest of us.”

Preston nodded. He hadn’t even noticed how the queen had finally gone down, distracted by swarms of hatchlings and soft shells. He just remembered the shrieking, the explosion, and how the ground shook when she fell. Of course it was Charlie, pulling some risky stunt to save people. It was kind of her style. 

By the time he instructed the last of the survivors to double check for nests and hatchlings that might have gotten away, MacCready and Charlie were near enough that he could see her condition more clearly. She had several scrapes and bruises on her face and hands, but nothing he’d never seen her with before. It was her legs and feet that concerned him. Both ankles torn to hell, dripping blood from holes ripped in her boots. One was twisted in a way he knew it was broken.

He finally brought his gaze up to look at MacCready, who was a bit scuffed up himself, but for all Preston knew, he was always like that. He was out of breath and his eyes were wide as he spoke. “I’m sorry. I tried to keep them off of her, but…” He trailed off, looking down at the broken woman in his arms. 

“It’s okay MacCready,” Preston reassured him, “You did your best.”

The other man grumbled, clearly in disagreement, and pushed past him and inside, behind the concrete walls of the fortress where the blonde settler and the older gentleman had put together a makeshift pallet from old coats. Lamp beams illuminated the area, stimpaks and gauze littering the floor, dumped there haphazardly. When MacCready laid Charlie down, she stirred, scowling and squirming until her eyes blinked open. 

She smiled weakly at Preston and reached for his hand, taking it in hers, but unable to squeeze it as she typically would have, strength drained by blood loss. “You should have seen the other guy,” she mumbled, barely more than a whisper, before drifting off back into unconsciousness. His chest tightened further as her eyes fluttered closed. 

“S’not as bad as it looks,” said the man serving as their medic as he examined her legs closely, “Little bastards nicked her pretty deep, but it’s nothing a stimpak and some stitches won’t fix. I’ll have to set the bone in the right one once we get the bleeding stopped.”

“Okay. Is there anything I can do to help?”

The man looked up at him sympathetically, scruffy eyebrows pressed together. “If she wakes up… you might have to hold her steady. It’ll hurt like hell.”

“Sure thing,” he said, more confident than he felt, still holding Charlie’s hand and attempting to ignore how clammy it was. 

“Uh, Preston,” shouted a frantic voice, the woman who’d gone to search for nests. She peeked her head in the doorway. “There’s too many. I need hel—“

“I got it,” MacCready interrupted her with a huff as he headed to the doorway. He stopped and turned back, darting his eyes over to Charlie and then to Preston, “Chuck needs you.”

* * *

Charlie awoke in a haze, disoriented, with only excruciating flashes of memory from the past few hours. She’d lost consciousness after the battle with the mirelurks and everything after that was just a blur of pain and incoherence. She’d never missed the medical practices of pre-war times quite so much as when she woke up in blistering agony to a man she didn’t know stitching up her wounds with what could have only been a dull needle sanitized with whiskey. 

She’d clung to Preston in a way that would have embarrassed her under any other circumstances, first grappling his hand, then his arms as he attempted to hold her still to keep from writhing as the man snapped her foot back into place. Preston apologized like it was his fault she was hurting, but she blacked out before she could tell him it wasn’t.

Charlie blinked her eyes a few times and looked around to gather her bearings, but it was too dark to see much, the only light in the room a small lamp in the corner. She lay on a sleeping bag now, the bloodsoaked coat-pallet-thing still on the floor in the corner of the room. She pushed herself up into a sitting position. Unwise, she realized as pain speared through her in all directions. She couldn’t stifle the groan and hiss of a curse that resulted. 

It was then that she noticed him, Preston, sitting leaned up against the wall several feet away from her with his head tilted down toward his chest, breathing steadily. Asleep. He must have insisted on sitting with her until she woke up, but he had to have been exhausted, too. She wondered at the time. It was sunset when the queen fell, but she had no sense of how much time had passed. 

Pulling up her Pip-Boy to check, Charlie accidentally activated the light that was never bright enough to find the ferals hiding in dark corners, yet now could well have been a small sun for all it radiated through the room. She switched it off as quickly as she could, but Preston had already stirred, his shadow on the far wall moving as he turned just slightly to face her.   
  
“Charlie,” he asked, voice crackling and Charlie couldn’t tell if it was grogginess or emotion. 

“Nope,” she teased in reply, “I’m a ghost.” 

Preston laughed and rose to his feet, crossing the few feet between them and sitting back down at her side. “There’s no such thing.”

“I _distinctly_ remember someone telling me to have an open mind a couple of months ago.”

“Well, let’s just say that maybe I like you alive,” he remarked as if he were trying to joke, but there was too much truth to it and he trailed off into sincerity instead, “Maybe I’m not sure what I’d do if something happened to you. Maybe I can’t even joke about it. Especially not after what happened today.” 

“Sorry,” she muttered. He was just saying his own feelings, but Charlie couldn’t help feeling reprimanded for her irreverence. 

“You’re sorry,” he asked, incredulous, “I asked you for your help, dragged you neck deep into this mess, and you’re sorry. I… don’t think that’s how this works.” 

“I was reckless,” she explained, “Mac told me it was a dumb idea to get in so close, but I’d already missed one shot, and I didn’t want to miss another one. At the time I thought you’d be upset about the hole I put in the wall.”

“You’re serious?”

“What good’s a Castle without walls?”

“A lot better than—” Preston froze mid-sentence, snorted, and shook his head.

“No, no. You have to finish your sentence,” she prodded, unable to hide the grin that twitched at the corners of her mouth, “I’m on the edge of my seat, er… sleeping bag.” 

“I was just going to say that the Commonwealth would be a darker place without you in it,” he said, “Hell, it was.” 

“For everyone,” she asked, turning her head to look at him,“Or for you?” 

He snapped his eyes up to meet hers almost instantly, still smiling. It was all the answer she needed, really, but she still waited for his words. “Both.” He took her hand, appearing to examine each of her fingers before lacing his own through them. “Definitely both.”

Charlie tried to ignore the giddy rush of heat to her face, the way her heart pounded against the wall of her chest. It was a lifetime since she last felt that way. Two lifetimes, technically, maybe three considering how long people usually lived in the wasteland. It had all seemed simpler back then, carefree. Nate had always told her that if something happened to him while he was deployed, he wanted her to move on and live happily. She’d promised him she would, even though she never expected it to be her reality. His loss shook her, and now, caring for someone was far scarier than anything the Commonwealth could throw at her. Caring for someone in this post-war hell meant opening yourself up to feeling that loss again, to living every day with a nagging worry that the person you love might die right in front of you, and you being utterly helpless to stop it. 

She couldn’t do it again, so she did what any reasonable person would do and threw herself into a swarm of mutant crabs, right in front of their queen so that Preston wouldn’t, so that he didn’t have to. He’d been the first friendly face she saw after she woke up, the first person to apologize to her for what she’d been through, and he’d been steadfastly by her side ever since, with an offer of help for whatever she asked of him. She’d rather die than live in a world without him in it. 

She had become so lost in her head, she did not realize she hadn’t responded to him, or made any gestures at all other than to blink and stare vacantly out into the dark hallway until he spoke again.

“Charlie?” His tone was that of someone regretting that worry had overpowered his desire to be patient. 

She felt his eyes on her even as she stared off into nothing, but they still caught her off guard when she turned to face him, admiration and concern shimmering from dark depths. “I feel the same.”

“What?” 

“The Commonwealth. It wouldn’t be the same without you to watch it’s back,” she explained, squeezing his hand, “Neither would I.”

Preston flinched, opening his mouth to speak, but closing it abruptly and settling for a smirk and a polite nod of his head to acknowledge her feelings. 

“Losing my husband, watching him die right in front of me, was the hardest thing I’ve ever survived,” she continued, tears like fire in her eyes, “And yeah maybe I put myself in harms way a lot, but I wouldn’t call it an unnecessary risk. I’ll be damned before I let anything like that happen to someone that important to me ever again.”

“That’s… a bold statement. In a lot of different ways.” He stiffened and his gaze became sharp and skeptical. Might as well have shot her daggers.

“Which part?”

Preston laughed, more a nervous reflex than out of amusement. “If I’m understanding you correctly, then you just told me I’m as important to you as your husband was.”

“I did,” she said, answering his uneasiness with confidence.

“And that all of this—“ he motioned to her injured legs with his free hand— “Is you trying to protect me.”

“Yes. That is correct,” Charlie confirmed and then added less seriously, “I mean, it’s also me trying to impress you by getting you a castle. What better way to express my feelings?”

He let out a sigh that turned into a laugh, expression softening. “I can think of at least one, maybe two better ways.” His eyes flicked down to her mouth and back up. 

“Oh really,” she teased, but leaned in closer, knowing exactly what he meant. “Like what?”

Preston touched her cheek with his hand, then her lips with his. It was polite and gentle with a firm edge that took her by surprise. He was confident, completely certain, kissing her as if he were simply stating a fundamental fact, as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do. 

“Just a suggestion,” he said as he pulled away slightly, just enough for their eyes to meet and breath to mingle.

Charlie snorted out a laugh, all too aware of the ridiculous blush that must be across her face. “I’ll take it under advisement.” 

Just as Charlie leaned forward to consider his suggestion more strongly, there was a shuffle of footsteps and someone cleared their throat. Preston started and pulled away from her, releasing her hand as he did so. She snapped her head around to see who had so rudely interrupted their moment.   
  
“MacCready,” she said, annoyance dissipating entirely as she noticed him leaning casually against the door frame. A smile stretched across his face like he’d just been caught sneaking cookies from the jar. 

“Hey Chuck,” he chirped, grin growing wider as he looked at Preston and nodded. “Garvey.” 

“MacCready,” Preston replied politely. “Need something?”

“Nope.” He stepped into the room further, kicking at the concrete with a booted toe. “Some more of your people showed up to help clean up, told me I could take a break, thought I’d come check on the fearless leader. You know, I usually charge for this kind of work.” 

“I probably have a few extra caps for you… somewhere,” Charlie interjected, worried her friend might decide this arrangement wasn’t worth his time. “And all my gratitude.” 

“This one’s on the house.” His bright eyes darkened, as if he was thinking of something else entirely. “My one contribution to the welfare of the Commonwealth. You’re welcome.” With that, he offered them both an irreverent salute and exited the room. 

“I’m going to go see if the new guys need help,” Preston said as he rose to his feet and walked to the door. He stopped at the doorway and looked back at her over his shoulder. “I’ll check in on you later, babe.” 

“Sounds... good,” she said with a smile and a nod, unable to make any other words work. He’d never called her anything but “ma’am,” “general,” or her name before. It was charming, but unexpected and she reeled momentarily from the spontaneity. She watched as he continued out of the room, vanishing down into the hallway, leaving her with only the butterflies in her stomach to chase away the pain of her injuries. 

She wasn’t complaining, though. Despite the casualties and her own injuries, she counted the Castle a victory, and for more reasons than one. 


End file.
